No exportDescriptor.properties and entities.xml in Confluence XML backup

[Cormant Systems Administrator]

Hi All,

Our Confluence server disk got corrupted last week and all the data including Confluence was gone. So now, we want to restore our Confluence using the XML backup. Unfortunately, the XML backup don't have this 2 file that is needed for restoration. 

exportDescriptor.properties

entities.xml

Is there anything that we can do to restore our XML backup? Thank you.

Best regards,

Cormant

[Thiago Masutti]

These are the main files for an XML export.

Do you have any OS file system backup that you can use as a point of restore?

It would be important to have a DB backup at the same point of the file system if your XML backup is corrupted.

Kind regards

Thiago Masutti

[Cormant Systems Administrator]

Hi Thiago,

Unfortunately, all of the files in the server where Confluence installed has gone because of the corrupted disk. Does this mean that we cannot restore our Confluence?

[Thiago Masutti]

I'm afraid so. :(

Confluence persists data in two locations:

•  Database; where most of the data resides.
• Local home folder (or shared-home when using clustered DC); where attachments files resides.

To make a restore without using an XML backup you would need a functioning backup from these two as detailed on Production Backup Strategy .
You could still just restore using the database, but then attachment files would be gone.

A healthy XML backup (.zip) would have the following (minimal) structure:

backup.zip
  entities.xml
  exportDescriptor.properties
  attachments
    sub-folders for attachments

If configuration was never changed, then you could have automatic backup files located in

<confluence-home>/backups

If we don't have any of these, then a restore might not be possible.

Kind regards,
Thiago Masutti

[Cormant Systems Administrator]

Hi @Thiago Masutti

Our XML backup zip only have attachments folder and plugin-data folder, is it still possible to restore it? Thank you.